Tires are composed of three primary materials: rubber, fabric, and steel. The fabric used in the tire is employed as rubberized fabric in many elements of the tire, such the carcass plies, belt plies, or bead area reinforcing plies. The rubberized fabric is supplied in calendered rolls to the tire building machine. Fabric materials used in the tire range from rayon, nylon, polyester, aramid, and other types of synthetic fibers and blends of such materials.
Conventionally, the fabric to be incorporated into a tire is received from the yarn manufacturer in spools of treated or untreated yarn. The yarn may already be formed into a cord, and for the discussion herein, the terms will be considered interchangeable. Even if the received yarn is pretreated, the yarn may still be subject to further treatment by the tire manufacturer to impart desired yarn characteristics. The received yarn is either stored or sent to a separate weaving loom to transform the yarn into fabric. Eventually, the yarn is formed into a fabric via a weaving operation and then the fabric is treated in the dip units.
During adhesive treatment of the material, the material is exposed to a steady state of heat for a specific amount of time to impart the desired properties to the yarn. The treatment processing lines are run at a consistent speed and at a certain temperature to insure that the amount of energy imparted into the yarn is consistent throughout the treatment process. During weaving, a weaving machine is frequently stopped and restarted due to yarn refilling and yarn breakage. Thus, because of multiple interruptions in the process, a weaving line is conventionally separate from the yarn treatment line where the heat history of the yarn must be controlled to achieve the desired yarn, and ultimate fabric, properties.